Fact, Fiction Blended Over Two Eras

Richard Bausch's wonderful novel, Hello to the Cannibals, showcases his exceptional grasp of the feminine. It links the lives of Lily Austin, an insecure, gifted mother and playwright of the late 20th century, and her subject and role model, the brave 19th century explorer Mary Kingsley.

Austin is a fiction, Kingsley a historical figure, the first woman to explore West Africa. Bausch twines them so well, you wish you could see a performance of Austin's play, also called Hello to the Cannibals.

Austin draws inspiration for her play by writing to Kingsley as if the latter were still alive: "I would like to have some of that bravery now. I'm not going to wild places, but I have a child with me, and the intricacy of another person, the responsibility of another person, of that other life in the world whose being is from my body and blood-well, that is a wilderness, too. Going out into the world, and making your way amidst the thickets of expectation and definition -- that's an exploration, too, isn't it?"

At the dawn of the 1990s, Austin is living with her in-laws and trying to write about Kingsley, the very definition of intrepidness and individualism. Austin views the explorer as a compass, moral and otherwise. Kingsley's fearlessness and singularity appeal to the young woman, who is struggling to make a living, scratch family itches and find love.

Austin's marriage to the damaged, selfish Tyler Harrison amounts to zero, so she leaves the Virginia home where she and Harrison live with his extended and troubled family, finally settling in New Orleans to create her own family circle.

Like Kingsley, Austin is middle-class and courageous. Unlike Kingsley, who skirted love but never succumbed to it, Austin is deeply domestic. The emotional territory the two women share is what Bausch so skillfully explores.

An old-fashioned novel with a modern sensibility, Hello to the Cannibals is extraordinarily complicated, like a watch telling time courtesy of numerous, sophisticated movements. Not only does it involve parallel narratives, it revolves around a play and features numerous letters between the players. Geography, too, is key.

While Hello to the Cannibals scrambles fiction, fact, gender and geography, its scaffolding is sturdy, its story always accelerating. By the time Austin finally realizes herself -- always self-conscious, she is too rarely self-confident -- there is much of her to care about. By the time Kingsley dies of typhoid fever in 1900, at 38, there is much to grieve for.

Rarely does a novel about friendship cross cultures and periods so artfully and movingly.